A stop sign is pictured in front of shipping containers at the Port of Long Beach in Long Beach, California, on July 11, 2025. (Photo: Reuters)
The United States on Friday will impose new tariffs of either 10% or 12.5% on goods from its top 60 trading partners, including China, Japan and Thailand, officials said, citing their alleged failure to adequately ban the import of goods made with forced labour.Thursday's announcement came ahead of the expiration of the 10% global tariff that President Donald Trump introduced in February shortly after the Supreme Court invalidated his sweeping country-specific "reciprocal" duties, as well as fentanyl-related levies against products from China, Canada and Mexico.
"President Trump recognises that decades of moral suasion have not eradicated forced labour from global supply chains," US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in a statement.
"The United States has had a forced-labour import ban for nearly a century, and rigorously enforces it; it's well past time for our trading partners to do the same," Greer said.
The targeted trading partners, also including Australia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Switzerland, Taiwan and Thailand, account for about 99% of US imports, according to the Office of the US Trade Representative.
